Be Back Soon!

Ok so just a temporary leave while I pull a Janel! I left Washington to go to Utah for a few hours drive to Vegas, sleep a few hours, drive the next day to Mexico - spent the weekend playing with the kids and chilling with friends and even a surprise birthday party (more to come with pics soon) and now after a passport fiasco (as in mine being taken to California while I'm still in Mexico) we made it out of Mexico and back up to Utah tonight.

Now it is 2am and I leave in 5 hours to start the drive up through Canada to Alaska for the summer so give me a few days to make it and recover and I'll post an update.

Oh P.S. coming into SLC my plane got struck by lightening, a little scary but I was surprisingly calm (mostly because there was nothing I could do anyway). I'll go into a little more detail soon too.

You Know You Love Someone When . . .

Now don't get too excited this is about a boy, but not "About THE Boy" - not that there is "A Boy" - oh man this is not going where I wanted it to.

ANYWAY - You know you love someone when you dress up like a Lion for a 1 yr old's Zoo themed birthday party. That's right we celebrated Gage's birthday this weekend in Portland and he loves characters (or so we thought) so when I found Ryan's Lion costume from a Halloween dance Emily asked me to wear if for the party 1) because Gage we thought would love it and 2) because Maisey kind of has a fear of people dressed up (unless maybe Disney Princesses) so we asked her if it was ok if it was me in a Lion costume and we let her name me (Tallula I think) so we had this planned for weeks.

Well Gage didn't find it so appealing (I'm sure Emily will post that picture on her blog here soon) but at least we accomplished #2 - Maisey told me she loved me as the Lion! The party was really fun the kids made masks and got their faces painted and pinned the tail on the Zebra and then we took their masks and I led them in an Animal parade around the neighborhood, then read them a Zoo story before cupcakes. It was really fun (I WILL charge for additional parties so don't get any ideas)! But for these two it seems I'll do just about anything - Love them! [more pics on Emily's blog soon].

Truck Driving - potential Career move!

So this last weekend we headed down to Rexburg to do a little pre-move after my parents closed on a house. Of course in all the excitement I didn't bring my camera but Aunt Audrey took enough pictures for all of us I just haven't gotten them yet. Anyway not to toot my own horn but I did successfully drive a 17 ft. U-Haul truck about 500 miles and it really wasn't that bad, except somewhat painful to go only 65-70mph through Montana.

However a HUGE thank you to my friends who came over and helped out both to load and unload the truck it went so fast and I really appreciated the extra muscle. As far as the new house/town are concerned I'm still a bit distant. The house is nice and has a lot of space and light so that's good and the new ward seemed really welcoming yet down to earth and the town is quaint yet has enough things to still be comfortable and I'm sure offers more than I even know about. I think at this time however I'm just choosing to remain a bit reserved because it's just different and being down there only made the whole move seem that much more real. I know it is a huge blessing and things really are just falling into place but my friend said it best - "moving is like ripping up roots!" Well I think I'll always feel a majority of my roots are in Spokane but home will be where my family is, even if that is Rexburg Idaho!

Spokane Tour Guide

So most of you know I'm heading back up to Alaska this summer to be a Tour Guide for the land tours of the cruiselines and so what better way to get back into the swing of things then to host my friend Mark on his visit to Spokane. The only problem, Mark came up on business and only had one day to see the sights so I kind of rushed him.

We started downtown - he stayed at the Davenport (high roller) so we first went to Dick's Hamburgers for a Whammy, fries, milkshake appetizer which I made him take down to Riverfront Park so that we could feed the ducks the leftovers.

WHAMMY!

Of course he had to visit and ride the largest radio flyer wagon in the world while he was there.

He's having so much fun!

Then he fed the remaing garbage from pre-dinner to the trash eating goat, I forgot to mention that this was a sculpture so he got really excited for a real goat - my bad. And unfortunately we missed the carousel by about an hour, it's not quite summer yet so the hours are short but he got to look inside the window at the 100 yr. old treasure.

Still trying to be excited even though it's not a real goat!

We took a quick walk down to the falls that were a little low this year due to lack of snow, but then we made sure to stop by the Bloomsday runners and Mark joined in the fun.

Running with the "pack" and getting mowed down by the wheelchair!


Finally we tried to beat the Sunset and raced over to Coeur D'Alene where we walked around the world's longest floating boardwalk and went and had real dinner in Dockside (with the just about the worst waiter ever) and finally finished with a tour by my house and then the temple on our way back to downtown.

It was a full night and I told Mark he definitely has to come back and hit up the carousel when it's open, go boating on the lake, and even go to Silverwood if at all possible - he's excited for the potential return and I think he got a good taste of Spokane at least!

Sun River

The other weekend I flew down to Portland to visit the kiddos and got to go on a fun adventure over to Sun River, OR (right near Bend and Mt. Bachelor) to spend the weekend at this fun little resort park thing to celebrate Shaun's birthday. It's up in the mountains so even though we got one beautiful day where we played tennis and rode bikes it ended up raining and eventually snowing a little.

Beautiful view on the drive!
Good thing Mais wore a helmet so it could protect her head from rubbing against the tire when she fell asleep!

But the highlights of the trip were riding in the car with Maisey and teaching her how to wear ear phones so I didn't have to listen to Dora the Explorer for 3 hours, remembering how much I love bikes and my bottom remembering how much I hate bike seats after not riding them forever, playing games with Shaun and Emily and how competitive they get, reading books - I love the new pinkalicious book, and just spending time with my family.

Loving the ear phones and stories!

The weekend was just what I needed to charge up for the first pre-move down to Rexburg.

Girls Just Want to Have Fun!

So since my life is both busy and seemingly dull at the same time I've avoided really posting too much - sorry I guess, but the last month has been a lot of fun and a lot of work at the same time.

In between organizing, de-junking, and packing up some stuff I snuck in a day of girl time with some of my best friends and their kids. It was seriously a girls day, there are five of us that have been friends since 6th grade and then 3 of them have had 5 girls and 2 boys. So seriously I borrowed my mom's van and loaded up four carseats with two of my friends and headed down to visit four of our favorite girls (the only one missing was Lisa - we sure missed her). The little girls played dress up and we all painted and even rode bikes for the boys.

Celeste joked that since we forgot to take pictures we wouldn't blog about it but I just wanted to say thanks again girls for making time to get together it was so much fun, Katelyn thanks for the yummy lunch and for hosting your new house is great, DaNae thanks for helping me strap in all the carseats and having such mellow kids to ride in the car, and Celeste thanks for all the snacks and that kid's CD that kept the kids happy even after the 5th full time (I was singing the squirrel song in my head the other day).